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The Privacy Of The Internet

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If a casual user of the internet were to Google a search for the word “privacy” as of June 2015, there would be close to 2 billion hits. Discussions of privacy, piracy and internet breaches are everywhere. The numerous Google hits show there is nearly universal agreement that (1) we have less privacy and more information than we used to, and (2) this is bad.Information itself is, of course, not bad, but as we have witnessed recently, even personnel record maintained by the United States government are subject to unethical hacking by all sorts of unscrupulous individuals and governments. Clearly, privacy is something that a great many people and businesses are concerned about. Whilenew information technologies (IT) have created the possibility of making lives easier or better, new IT has also created new conflicts with our existing business and personal norms, and laws and our traditional ethical principles. IT has even caused the creation of a new field“Information Systems Ethics” to cover these changes ( ).
Privacy concern is not a new phenomenon especially in the United States. However the nature of the privacyconcern has changed over time. The founders of the United States were so concerned about privacy that privacy protection is incorporated in the First Amendment to the Constitution. guarantees of religious freedom speak to concerns about the private right to practice religious beliefs as well as the right to be free from governmental impositions of religious

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